By Stuart Townsend
Actor/director Stuart Townsend wrote and directed the film “Battle in Seattle.” The fictional film depicts the massive 1999 demonstrations that brought to light the need for open trade talks that include workers’ rights, human rights and protections for the environment. If the initial two-week limited release attracts a large audience, the film will be distributed nationwide. AFL-CIO Now senior writer James Parks interviewed Townsend about the film.
Question: What inspired you to make “”?
Townsend: Globalization is the most powerful, important subject that we have in our world today. In my studies about globalization and the institutions in the global economy, I came upon the battle in Seattle. It seems to me to be an event that is the cornerstone of this 21st century economy we’re living in now. I feel a lot of the problems of the world stem from institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and a lot of the policies are designed to create inequality and misery. This story is an important story that was forgotten. It is a story that was misrepresented by the mainstream media. They focused on the spectacle and the anarchists. They forgot about the 50,000 or 60,000 labor and peaceful marchers who were out there, and a lot of the content got thrown out.
I thought I could bring the world of labor and activism to the big screen, which is not your average Hollywood movie. I decided not to make a documentary but to create characters that a mainstream audience could attach to. I want to inspire a new generation to look at these groups and activists that stood up together and actually shut something down. Ultimately it’s about empowerment of individuals. I hope that kind of solidarity inspires people to go and do the same thing.
Q: What can union members and other activists do to help get that message out?
Townsend: Go to the cinema and bring your friends. It is a movie about solidarity and it’s a film you can talk about afterward. After a lot of the movies these days you forget what you’ve seen as soon as you leave the cinema. I hope the movie will spark debate. There are some debates even within the film. I just hope anyone who is in the labor movement and anyone who cares about workers’ rights and the environment goes to see the movie.
We have to keep this film out there for the first two weeks [after it premiers Sept. 19]. If people go out to see the film in those first two weeks, then we get to go nationwide. There were documentaries done about this event and nobody saw them. But maybe someone loves Andre Benjamin’s acting and they go to see the movie and learn about the WTO. Or someone is a fan of Charlize Theron or Woody Harrelson and they go to see the movie to see them on the screen and they learn about the WTO—about labor and about standing up and using your voice. That’s what it’s about.
Q: What do you hope people will take away from this movie?
Townsend: I hope they are inspired by solidarity and the fact that your voice counts. I think that’s a message that’s needed right now. We’ve had a government for the past seven years that’s not listening and people do feel disenfranchised and voiceless. This whole American dream is built on liberty and the pursuit of happiness and it was built on freedom of expression and raising your voice. That’s been forgotten about in many respects. But I hope people connect to that—the protestors in Seattle had their right to speech taken away from them. That makes me angry and I hope it makes everybody else angry, too.
Q: As you researched this movie, what surprised you about the WTO?
Townsend: I was surprised how much WTO impacted so many things in our lives, and I was shocked how uncommonly difficult it is to find out and understand what they do. I’ve researched the WTO for six years now and I'm still not sure of everything it does. One of the lines in the film is actually a play on that. It’s been cleverly designed to be obscure and it takes activists groups and unions to distill the information and make it accessible to the public. Before Seattle, most people didn’t know anything about the WTO. But at least they knew after this event that something is going on in the global economy and that this institution was something to be feared and looked at and studied. It literally turned millions of people on to this fact and these institutions are under the spotlight. Every time they try to meet, there are protests, which means media coverage, and I think that’s incredibly important.
At the end of the movie, there’s kind of a global montage of protests of people protesting all over the world. You don’t hear about these protests in the mainstream media. It’s a very powerful thing to see. All these different people out there protesting the same power, the same system that doesn’t seem to work for anybody.
Q: What worries you most about the WTO’s role in the global economy?
Townsend: At a personal level, simple everyday things like food standards, clean air. I’m fortunate enough that my life doesn’t depend on access to essential medicine, but I think that’s a huge problem in this world and the way the WTO handles property rights to medications is very important. I believe people should come before profits. While I’m not against capitalism, capitalism doesn’t have a soul, human beings do. We make the world go around, not corporations, not businesses. We can’t let businesses control our lives. We need to get back to a system that’s more human based.
Q: What has been the response to the movie so far?
Townsend: I’ve been to eight screenings. People love it. They shout and they scream because it’s a film about people joining together. That’s solidarity. What is cinema—you go to be with a bunch of people in a dark room and there’s a synergy. It’s the same kind of thing on the screen. It’s been amazing. People are standing, cheering, really getting something from it. People get angry, people get inspired. I’ve had people say they’ve gone home and studied the WTO and before seeing the movie, they didn’t know it existed.
("Battle in Seattle" opens in selected theaters Sept. 19 in Minneapolis; New York; San Francisco; San Rafael, Calif.; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. On Sept. 26, it begins playing in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Sacramento, Calif. On Oct. 3, it hits Denver; Nashville, Tenn.; Philadelphia; Plano, Texas; and Santa Barbara, Calif. On Oct. 10, it opens in Olympia, Wash. To find out what theater in your area is showing the movie, click or call 1-866-758-1258.)
